Craig Hill: 40 Love...?

If you ever find yourself wandering into a Craig Hill show, here’s a tip: don’t bother avoiding the front row. Nobody is safe from the ultra-camp, perennially kilted Scot as he savages victims from every corner. If nothing else, his eyesight must be outstanding.

He’s got an uncanny ability to extract a single syllable from any one petrified onlooker and within seconds construct a lengthy assault on their presumed social class, hometown, dress sense or sexual orientation. Proving once and for all that imitation is far from the highest form of flattery, Hill’s knack for mimicking accents and mannerisms elicits a riotous response almost without fail. Unfortunately, this catty, lightning-quick brand of insult comedy seems to be his only trick, comprising what must be the majority of his set. It’s clear that he’s relishing it, but after the umpteenth dig about how posh Gillian from Cambridge is, the shtick wears very thin.

Hill seems to think that his status as a gay man grants him free rein to pepper his show with casually homophobic slurs against lesbians. It would be offensive if it weren’t so derivative; and when Hill relies on public perceptions of his own sexuality for so many of his jokes, it seems a little hypocritical. But it's really just another example of his half-baked scripted material, and Hill quickly returns to the audience-baiting when he runs out of ideas. Ultimately, he pushes us into such a state of wariness that suddenly, when he asks if he has any homosexuals in the crowd, not one of 150 people at a Craig Hill show happens to be gay.